A board room with a view - entrepreneurs who used their love of the outdoors to create Glacier Wilderness Guides and Montana Raft Co. in Montana's Glacier National Park

Nation's Business, August, 1994 by Howard Rothman

Growing businesses share their experiences in creating and marketing new products and services.

When Randy Gayner and his partners go to work each morning, they head for an office located in one of the business world's most spectacular settings, with Montana's Glacier National Park right in their back yard. This is, of course, precisely why Gayner and a pair of friends started their two related companies: Glacier Wilderness Guides and Montana Raft Co.

"We were all tired of doing what we were doing," says the 41-year-old Gayner. "We wanted to stay here and have fun."

A native of Cleveland, Gayner moved to Big Sky country in 1976 with a bachelor of science degree in zoology. After several seasons as a backcountry ranger for the National Park Service, he wanted a new way to make a living in an area he had grown to love.

His friends Mark O'Keefe, a state government worker, and Dave Ames, an employee of the U.S. Forest Service, felt the same way. In 1983, when the three realized Glacier had no official backpacking guide service, they proposed the idea to park authorities, who gave them the go-ahead. Other popular parks had already allowed concessionaires to lead day hikers and overnight campers on commercial trips.

"This was around the tune James Watt was secretary of the interior, and that helped," Gayner recalls. "He was pushing for the privatization of services in the national parks so the government wouldn't have to provide them."

Success would not come so easily. The three, who initially handled all of the company's business matters while leading every one of its clients along Glacier's trails, quickly developed a favorable reputation as the park's exclusive guide service. But their first three seasons were money-losers, and O'Keefe and Ames decided to move on. With their departure, Gayner took steps that ultimately turned the business around.

First, Gayner and his wife, Cris Coughlin Gayner, now 35, bought out one of the original partners, while longtime area resident John Gray, 48, bought out the other. Then, when one of the few commercial river rafting permits available in the area came up for sale, the company acquired it and began offering guided trips down the Middle Fork and North Fork of the Flathead River. Eventually, it started advertising in national magazines like Outside and Backpacker.

And at last, Gayner says, the business became profitable.

"But I think it was the time factor more than anything else," he adds. "About 2 million people come through Glacier every year, and more and more of them were starting to hear about us. Plus, it didn't hurt that the whole market for adventure vacations was really on the upswing."

Today, the two enterprises cater to everyone from celebrities such as actress Jill Clayburgh and "Entertainment Tonight" co-host Mary Hart to families from Nebraska and business leaders from New York. Last year the companies' umbrella S corporation employed 30 guides during the season running from May to October. It also tallied 4,200 rafting user days and 2,500 hiking user days (one user day equals one person spending one day on the water or trails) en route to grossing $300,000.

Both of these totals are a far cry from the original company's initial season, when it logged 100 user days on park trails and grossed just $7,000.

Expansion has come at a price, of course; the owners--including longtime employee Doug Niemann, 44, who was recently awarded a 4 percent share in the company--now spend only about 10 percent of their time in the backcountry compared with the 75 to 100 percent originally. Instead, their days are consumed by financial duties, marketing and advertising chores, and insurance matters.

These changes in obligations do not seem to bother them, though, and plans are in the offing for still more enlargement. If they can get the necessary permits, Gayner says, "we're looking to increase our hiking service by offering guides in Yellowstone National Park and to expand our rafting business by buying a permit for the Salmon River."

In the meantime, the partners and their employees--often vacationing schoolteachers, local college students, and winter employees of the local ski resort--will continue showing visitors a good time on the area's trails and white water. And, of course, occasionally taking a peek at the stunning natural wonders in their back yard.

Howard Rothman, a writer in Littleton, Cola, is co-author of Companies With A Conscience: Intimate Portraits of Twelve Firms That Make A Difference, recently re-released in paperback by Citadel Press.